The Japanese company plans to transfer the production by investing some 300 million yen (US$2.4 million) to renovate facilities to a Chinese subsidiary in Dalian, a port city in northeast China Liaoning Province, Toshiba spokeswoman Yumiko Kokubu said.

"We will shift the television production to the Dalian plant from April to strengthen our competitiveness in the colour-TV market," Kokubu said.

"We can reduce labour costs and parts costs as the quality of Chinese-made parts has improved significantly," she said.

The workforce at Dalian will be boosted to about 2,000 from 1,200, with annual output targeted at 1.5 million televisions against the current one million. Some 800,000 sets are expected to be exported to Japan this year.

Toshiba will terminate domestic production of cathode-ray tube television sets by the end of this month, the spokeswoman said.

The Toshiba plant at Saitama, north of Tokyo, currently making standard televisions will convert from April to make liquid crystal projectors and digital televisions, Kokubu said.

The plant, with annual production capacity of 500,000 television sets, accounts for nearly half of Toshiba's domestic sales worth 4.5 billion yen (US$36 million). The rest comes from imports from Asian suppliers.

Its workforce of 3,000 will not be reduced as a result of the production shift, the spokeswoman said.

(China Daily 03/19/2001)